Ice Age: I can control plant growth

Chapter 141 Maple Tree Phone
Mayor Qian pressed his brows to ease the headache caused by the pressure, and sighed helplessly: "Alas, there are so many people, don't you have any ideas for solving the problem?"

After a pause, Mayor Qian said encouragingly, "If anyone can provide an effective solution, I will reward him with a complete third-level mutant beast on behalf of the city government."

Everyone looked at each other, with eagerness and helplessness in their eyes.

A third-level mutant beast! How much meat would that have, and the precious mutant beast crystal core? Who wouldn't want it?

However, they are not meteorologists, so how can they find a solution to smog?
At this moment, Tang Anguo stood up and said, "Just because we have no solution doesn't mean others have no solution either."

Mayor Qian was a little surprised, "Oh, what do you mean?"

"Has everyone forgotten Wanling City and Li Mu? Since he can create plants like the Red Flame Fruit that have magical effects and solve the problem of keeping warm, maybe he can also solve the problem of smog for the people living in smog. He quickly organized a capable team. These people were carefully selected by him, and they will rush to Wanling City as quickly as possible."

Hearing this, everyone couldn't help but think of the plants from Wanling City, each of which had magical effects. They immediately felt that Tang Anguo's suggestion made sense. Since they couldn't think of a solution, they would seek help from others.

"Okay, then I'll leave this matter to you. Send someone to Wanling City as soon as possible to ask them if they have a solution to the smog."

A moon that was rounder than last night rose from the east, and countless stars in the unpolluted sky shone with their own light, even if it was so faint that it was invisible.

Just like countless ordinary people living on this land, they have their own trajectories and their own extraordinary and passionate lives.

After dinner, Li Mu did not go back to his bedroom to rest as usual, but went straight to the laboratory. In the afternoon, Hu Li's suggestion about the wired telephone gave him some inspiration. At this moment, he was thinking deeply about which plant should be used as the experimental subject.

In fact, with Li Mu's ability, he could just pick a plant as a basis and then make appropriate modifications according to actual needs. However, this approach was not economical, as the transformation process would consume a lot of his source energy.

For example, the energy consumption required to grow a small shrub into a towering tree is very different from that required to grow an already tall tree even taller.

The transformation of the former requires breaking through the growth limitations of the plants themselves, so it consumes a lot of energy; while the latter only requires accelerating the growth rate of the plants, which is relatively simple.

Therefore, unless it is difficult to find species similar to the envisioned plant in the real world, Li Mu usually chooses plants with similar characteristics for transformation.

After some thought, Li Mu felt that the plant transformed into a wired telephone should have two characteristics: first, the roots should be long, preferably more than a thousand meters, so that it can cover the entire Wanling City. Second, it should have a high level of intelligence so that it can distinguish who the user wants to call.

After thinking it through, Li Mu suddenly realized that the plant he was looking for only needed to meet the first point. After all, in the real world, no plants had consciousness, so he had to rely on himself to transform its intelligence.

After picking and choosing among a pile of materials for ten minutes, Li Mu finally found a plant that met his requirements - the maple tree.

The roots of ordinary maple trees are extremely long, reaching hundreds of meters. Therefore, during the transformation process, Li Mu only needs to further improve the extension ability of the maple tree roots and strengthen their toughness and firmness to complete the task.

Once you have made up your mind, you can start working on it. Li Mu picked out a plump maple seed and placed it on the table. Then he activated his ability according to his original idea. With the flash of green light, the experiment began.

Half an hour later, a seed broke through the soil and quickly grew into a seedling. After a few breaths, it had grown into a small tree half a meter high.

At the same time, its roots were also extending wildly in all directions, spreading out over a dozen meters. Suddenly, the ends of two of the roots began to undergo strange changes, gradually forming two objects that resembled landline phone handles.

At this point, Li Mu stopped supplying energy, and with a slight movement of his mind, he controlled the two phone handles to come in front of him. Then he put the two handles on his left and right ears respectively, infused a little energy, and whispered to the left handle:
"Hey, hey, can you hear me?"

As soon as the words fell, the same voice came again, "Hey, hey, hey, can you hear me?"

Li Mu was very sure that the sound came from the right handle because the sound came twice, not just once.

"The experiment should be successful, but I have to find someone to test it again tomorrow."

Li Mu gently placed the handle on the table. Without thinking of continuing the experiment, he turned around and went back to the bedroom.

After a simple wash, Li Mu lay quietly on the bed in cotton pajamas, looking at the starry sky. It was only a little after eight o'clock in the evening, but he was not sleepy at all.

Thinking back to the time before the end of the world, when there were computers and mobile phones, at this time he would either be conquering the canyon with Cheng Cheng and Asao, or lying in bed reading novels. He would never go to bed until about 12 o'clock in the morning.

In fact, the reason why many people stay up late is not because they don’t want to sleep, nor because they can’t sleep due to insomnia. The real reason is that the daytime time does not belong to themselves, but to the company and life.

Only at night, when I am alone in my small room without being disturbed by many people and things in life, do I feel that I belong alone. If I go to bed early, I will have to start a new round of battle with life when I wake up the next day.

In this way, many people will go to bed later and later, until one day they become completely insomniac and cannot fall asleep even if they want to go to bed earlier.
Li Mu couldn't sleep for this reason. Now as the lord of a city, he could arrange his own schedule as he pleased and sleep as late as he wanted.

What really made him toss and turn was a sudden feeling of loneliness.

Yes, loneliness. Even though his parents and close friends were around him, he still felt a lingering loneliness.

Li Mu lay on the bed, his mind full of thoughts. After thinking for a full hour, he still couldn't figure out where the loneliness came from, nor did he feel sleepy at all.

He simply got out of bed and poured all the energy in his body into the hibiscus tree and the lighthouse tree until there was not a drop left. A feeling of exhaustion suddenly came over him, and he staggered back to bed and fell into a deep sleep.

Silent all night.

In the morning sunshine, Li Mu was in high spirits, and the troubles of last night had been far behind him. The construction of the botanical garden was nearing completion, and the remaining details had been handed over to Ke Tianze for full responsibility.

Therefore, after breakfast, Hu Li and Hong Pengfei followed Li Mu to the laboratory to assist him in completing the final test of the wired telephone tree.

"Boss, is this the new plant you created yesterday?" Hong Pengfei asked curiously, his eyes full of anticipation.

"Why does a maple tree look so small?" Hu Li looked at the small tree in front of him with a puzzled look on his face.

Li Mu smiled calmly and explained, "It is indeed a maple tree, but this is not its complete form. It was late last night and the laboratory space was limited, so I had to conduct a preliminary growth-inducing test first."

He paused, then instructed: "Pick up the phone handles on the table first, then stand a little further away, and we will conduct the second call experiment."

Under Li Mu's guidance, Hu Li and Hong Pengfei carried out the experiment in an orderly manner. And the seemingly petite maple tree was quietly waiting to bloom with their help.

After the two of them stood still, Li Mu said calmly: "Little Fox, first inject the source energy into the handle, and then just talk to it, it's similar to the old phone."

Hu Li heard this without any doubt and followed suit. As the source of energy continued to flow in, the surface of the handle lit up. Seeing this, Hu Li whispered:
"Potato Potato, I'm Sweet Potato, please answer if you hear me!"

At the same time, Hong Pengfei on the other side also heard Hu Li's voice and replied in tacit understanding:

"Sweet potato, sweet potato, I'm potato, got it, over!"

Seeing that the call was fine, the two of them kept talking like kids who had just gotten a new toy.

Until five minutes later.

Hu Li stopped first, looked at Li Mu with a look of unsatisfied interest and said, "Boss, I only have about half of the energy left in my body."

Li Mu nodded gently and explained: "You will be responsible for all the energy consumed by the call you initiated."

Hu Li suddenly realized and complained:

"Oh, so it costs money to make calls, but it's free to answer them."

"What doomsday mobile package!"

Li Mu smiled and said, "Even a weakling like you can use it for ten minutes. It seems that the energy consumed is not that much."

Hearing Li Mu's teasing, Hu Li didn't dare to say a word because she was indeed a weakling.

Seeing this, Li Mu's face straightened, "Next, we will start testing the usage time of various spirit coins."

After he finished speaking, Li Mu threw ten copper spirit coins to Hu Li and said casually, "There is a groove behind the handle, just put the spirit coins in it."

Hu Li took the spirit coin, turned the handle over, and immediately found the groove that Li Mu mentioned.

This is a long and narrow gap, similar in length to the coin slot of a claw machine, and is easy to identify.

Inserting a copper spirit coin into the gap, Hu Li and Hong Pengfei conducted a second round of experiments.

Ten minutes later, the test results came out. One copper spirit coin could support a call for about one minute, and then a new one had to be replaced in time.

Moreover, the call process can be interrupted. After the call is stopped, the source energy in the Copper Spirit Coin will no longer be consumed.

However, when the call was initiated again, the usage time of this copper spirit coin was less than one minute, about fifty seconds.

Li Mu had some guesses about this result. It should be that some source energy would be consumed when making the call.

However, the above test results are based on the fact that the two are only a dozen meters apart. Now, we have to conduct long-distance tests.

Thinking of this, Li Mu brought the maple tree and the two people to the ground and planted it next to the City Lord's Mansion.

"Next, Little Fox, you go east and wait at the city gate. Ah Fei, you go west and wait at the city wall."

The two people who received the order did not ask any more questions. They nodded and walked in opposite directions.

After the two left, Li Mu placed his hand on the maple tree, and with a thought, a huge amount of source energy poured into it.

The maple tree grew quickly, and in a short while it had grown to more than ten meters tall and more than one meter thick, becoming a towering tree.

Its roots also spread rapidly in the east and west directions underground, and soon reached the border of Wanling City.

At the same time, Hu Li and Hong Pengfei also arrived at their respective positions.

Sensing this, Li Mu controlled the roots of the maple tree to emerge from the ground and put the handle into the hands of the two again.

As Hu Li inserted the spirit coin into the groove again, a breath later, Hong Pengfei on the other side heard her voice again.
An hour later, the long-distance call test was completed and the result was still satisfactory. Although the two people were about 500 meters apart, the quality of the call was not affected and the voices were still very clear, as if they were talking right next to each other.

The duration of a call that can be made with one copper spirit coin was only reduced from 1 minute to 59 seconds. This was expected. After all, the distance was far, so some energy loss was normal.

At this point, the experiment was successfully completed. When Hu Li and Hong Pengfei returned to Li Mu again, it was time for the much-loved naming process.

However, the naming process went smoothly this time. Hu Li suggested calling it "Maple Tree Telephone". "Maple tree" represents its original species, and "telephone" also highlights its function, so that people can know what it is used for as soon as they hear this name.

Li Mu was also very satisfied with the name "Maple Tree Phone", and the next task was very simple. He only had to tell Cheng Cheng and Asao about the existence and functions of Maple Tree Phone, and the rest of the promotion work would be left to them.

On the other hand, Tang Anguo and a dozen soldiers were hiding in an abandoned house about three kilometers away from Wanling City, temporarily avoiding the groups of mutant cats outside.

Through observation, it was found that the breeds of these mutated cats are not the same. There are rural cats such as the orange cats and calico cats commonly seen in rural areas, as well as exotic cats such as ragdolls and blue cats raised as pets. The only thing in common is that their body sizes have expanded more than ten times and are now as big as calves.

Half an hour later, when the group of mutant cats disappeared in the thick fog, a soldier dared to curse in a low voice: "Fuck, since when did cats start to gather in groups?"

Another soldier replied: "What's the big deal? I saw in the news before that there was an island abroad with tens of thousands of cats. Every time the fishermen came back from fishing, the cats would rush to grab the fish, just like bandits crossing the border."

"Damn, I hate cats the most!"

Seeing that the two wanted to continue the discussion, Tang Anguo frowned, "Shut up!"

Then he turned to look at the adjutant beside him and asked, "How far are we from Wanling City?"

"Not far away, only a few kilometers left."

(End of this chapter)